Thanks to Blastr for bringing this IGN interview with Steve DeKnight, executive producer and writer of Starz’s Spartacus series, we learn that the writing staff of Spartacus are all big fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones while he explains why a certain storyline they had planned for the new season fell by the way side:

“You know, it’s interesting because we did have an incest plot planned for Vengeance, with the twin characters of Seppius and Seppia, but when I heard that Game of Thrones had it as an integral part of the story then we decided to, let’s say, tip our hat to it, as we drove past. But we didn’t go there. And the only reason we didn’t go there, even though it worked great for the story, is that we didn’t want to repeat something that somebody else was doing. And Game of Thrones did it so brilliantly. All of us writers on Spartacus love Game of Thrones. It’s just so well done. So the incest thing ultimately didn’t make it into our story because we didn’t want to repeat other things and it could easily be taken out. So we have to find our unusual extremeness in other ways. Which, believe me, by the end of season we do.”

Spartacus: Vengeance, the second season of the series, bows January 27th. I have to say, it’s a show I enjoyed after a rather bumpy start, with some positively operatic story turns and engaging performances from several cast members. The tragic death of lead actor Andy Whitfield was a great blow to the show, but I’m hopeful that the second season will come together and be at least as successful as the first (with, hopefully, none of the awfulness of that initial pilot episode!)